Friday, August 13, 2010

Where are your global warming jokes now?

Every time there's a big blizzard or an extended cold snap, you can count on the climate-change skeptics, particularly those who host radio shows or draw editorial cartoons, to make "Inconvenient Truth" jokes and rehash an ironic appeal for more global warming.

Such wags go completely silent when we're clobbered by a heat wave, as we are being clobbered this weekend. Which, while inconsistent, is appropriate. Weather is not climate. Temperatures and precipitation levels are always going to exhibit dramatic swings.

Consulting today's thermometer for evidence either way about climate trends is "“like assessing how the economy is doing by looking at the change in your pocket,” said a Columbia University professor quoted last month in the New York Times.

True, but don't those climate records show periods of cooling as well as rising temps? And we know the ultimate trend is for the earth to cool - see the laws of thermodynamics. So even though it is Stosh, a healthy bit of skepticism is not something to snicker at.

Excuse me!, its Summer its suppose to be warm. After growing up in Chicago
long before air conditioning I can tell you about living on the North side with
the houses so close together you could almost touch the house next door.
Global warming is a myth. Its all a ploy be Gore and the tree huggers to spread
their agenda. This world has been around for millions of years, even the Democrats could not have screwed it up in such a short time.

---Q: What's the difference between a global warming alarmist and a blonde?

A: Not much. The blonde keeps looking through her 1970s LP collection to find global temperature "records", while the alarmist insists "the record" only goes back 100 years or so and ignores the much warmer temperatures that prevailed over most of the past 10,000 years.

Q: What's the difference between a global warming alarmist and the comically forgetful fish Dory in Finding Nemo?

A: Every time Nemo's dad asks her the same question, Dory thinks it is the first time he has asked it. Every time a temperature record somewhere -- anywhere -- is broken, the alarmist thinks it is the first time a temperature record somewhere -- anywhere -- has been broken.

Aren't the fires in Russia linked to it being the hottest summer ever?

And isn't Pakistan experiencing unprecedented flooding? And isn't more rain associated with hotter temperatures b/c more water gets evaporated and absorbed into the atmosphere?

My speculation is that Right Wingers want to believe in their pet libertarian/F.A. Hayek economic theories. And these theories provide no way of dealing with a problem like climate change.

So, if their theories don't provide a solution the problem must not exist. B/c they *know* their political ideology is true.

Right Wingers are like religious extremists. They can't perceive reality for how it is. They either ignore or get angry about facts that contradict their worldview, instead of modifying their worldview like rational, mature people do.

When someplace has record cold this winter, the deniers will trumpet that as "proof" that global warming doesn't exist.
They will continue to due so even when New York City is surrounded by a 50 foot wall to keep out the ocean & New Orleans is abandoned forever!

Just look at the article about the broken glacier. Look at the oblique use of language that vaguely but not completely says global warming is the cause.

"It's been a summer of near biblical climatic havoc across the planet, with wildfires, heat and smog in Russia and killer floods in Asia. But the moment the Petermann glacier cracked last week — creating the biggest Arctic ice island in half a century — may symbolize a warming world like no other."

"may symbolize"? This is a falsely neutral-sounding construction--and of course the writer packs all the weather events into this glacier story. It would be more honest to say that many people think the breakoff was caused by global warming, and maybe even mention that some people don't.

"The drifting ice sheet is likely to remain at the heart of the global warming discussion during its journey." Ah, so would I have been allowed to say "The unusually cold winter in Texas is likely to remain at the heart of the global warming discussion as long as it persists"? Again, weasely and somewhat tautological--sort of like "This point of view is likely to remain at the heart of the argument as long as I keep bringing it up."

But wait!

"While Greenland's glaciers break off thousands of icebergs into Arctic waters every year, scientists say this ice island is the biggest in the northern hemisphere since 1962." Did that one 48 years ago possibly symbolize global warming?

There are many other examples. I'm not a denier, but I am a skeptic of the cataclysmic predictions and a believer that there is no reason to think that the temperature over 130 years is the perfect "normal" and should stay constant, when we know that global temperatures have changed over the centuries.
...

Stupid points by both sides. Of course the climate is changing. It's been changing since the beginning of time. Here's the one and only relevant question:

What's the ideal climate?

Oddly enough, no one is willing to answer that question.

I'll start treating climate change like a crisis when the people who tell me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis. I'm talking to you, Al. Sell the mansions, sell the yacht, stop flying. Get your massages locally.

People trying to guess what is or isn't climate change by daily temperature are as stupid as the hysterical idiots claiming they know better on the radio or in the paper. Climate change has been on-going for millions of years and swings back and forth like a pendulum from hot to cold. Yes, man's behavior is affecting it, but it is inevitable. Picking any one day or season is ridiculous, which is why you won't hear from these idiots when the temperature hits 98, they know.

[[Right Wingers are like religious extremists. They can't perceive reality for how it is.]]

Left wingers are ditto.

Everyone views what they perceive as "real" through a filter composed of a mixture of their desires, their bigotries, and their hypocrisies. For example: you.

"Right wingers" - to the degree they are religious extremists - are on board the Global Warming bandwagon. Have been for years. But it's far too comforting in your martyred ivory tower to continue to trumpet the same old cliched denunciation you've used over and over and over again.

People who support "global warming" typically claim to believe in it. And they attempt to denounce those who don't support it as "deniers", those who do not believe in it.

Here's the thing: global warming purports to be science. Science either is, or it isn't. Belief doesn't enter into it. The moment you have to believe in global warming to make it real to you is the moment you create the religion of global warming.

No one believes in gravity. Those who deny a belief in gravity do not fly off into space when they run and jump in their new Keds.

We can measure gravity; we can predict it. And before we can conclude that the hypothetical gravity has grown up into a scientific theory we have to predict it over and over and over again, and come to within an acceptable tolerance for error of measurement each and every time.

Can anyone measure global warming? Reliably? Ans: no. Some claim to, but their measurements are still criticized for various reasons of technical incompetence and skewing - deliberate or otherwise.

Can anyone predict global warming? Ans: no. Climate is, by definition and as its supporters admit, a trans-generational phenomenon. What we predict for climate cannot be declared correct for generations. The evidence that the predictions are even in the same galaxy, let alone the same ballpark, is virtually nonexistent as the mechanism of prediction cannot arrive at the correct numbers by working backwards to a known past.

The science of global warming in its current condition wouldn't pass muster at a 7th-grade science fair. Which makes it pathetic that a bunch of otherwise educated people believe it does, and further that it should, and still further that the rest of the world is so dim that it should go along for the ride.

There has always been problems - mostly severe - whenever the power structure of any culture decided that it knew all there was worth knowing and that they had all the answers worth having. Such arrogance crippled the Catholic church in the middle ages and rennaisance, it has crippled islamic culture since the 12th century, it is one of the primary reasons that communism and socialism are doomed to be known as incompetent economics superimposed upon a thoroughly retarded understanding of human nature ... and it is going to cripple the scientific world - all of it, those parts which support the hypothesis of man-made global warming and those parts which don't.

How many can name the Cardinals who helped Galileo get his papers to the printing press? Compare to those who say "The Catholic Church", without distinction and as a whole, resisted Galileo's science.

IF global warming is as complete and robust as its supporters believe - and I use that word deliberately - then it does not hurt to get down into the weeds with the skeptics who wish it to answer the same challenges that e-v-e-r-y other science has had to answer: PROVE it. Over and over and over again.

Not on paper; not in computer models with self-described "fudge factors". Make tangible, set-in-stone predictions on a scale relevant to your science, and then wait a century for the time to take new measurements.

Stop demanding that people accept on faith the suppositions being made, and for GODSake stop with the invalid and farcical policy recommendations based on a hypothesis awaiting proof. "Fixing" global warming "just in case it's true" is a Pascal's Wager and does nothing to discredit those who claim its supporters are pushing a religion.

Another example of using a few events to declare a trend, from this morning ABC. Vargas starts of with the old, mask it in a question trick.

ELIZABETH VARGAS: And coming up next, from killer heat waves to fires to those devastating floods in Pakistan and in Iowa, why all the severe weather? Is it global warning?

7:45

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: This winter, we were walloped by snow. This summer, weltering heat. Pakistan fighting its worst floods ever. Russia, its worst wildfires ever. Both sparked by extreme weather. That has put the debate over climate change and global warming front and center once again. And Dan Harris put himself right in the thick of it.

ABC Graphic: Summer of Heat, Fire and Floods: Is Climate Change to Blame?

DAN HARRIS: It has been a long, miserable summer all over the planet. Here at home, we've had the hottest year on record. There have been killer heat waves and also those devastating floods in the Midwest. Over in Russia, the hottest summer on record with thousands dead and hundreds of brush fires destroying wheat crops. In Pakistan, the heaviest monsoon rains on record leaving 14 million people homeless. And in the arctic, the largest chunk of ice to break away from a glacier since scientists started monitoring. Add it all up and does it mean global warming is here? Well, scientists say you can't blame any one weather event on global warming. But these sorts of extreme weather events are getting more common and are predicted to get even more so. So we're looking at a planet potentially where the unusual becomes quite usual?

--Let's look at that one sentence: "But these sorts of extreme weather events are getting more common and are predicted to get even more so." His first assertion is stated as simple fact, and the second is, of course, the opinion of certain people, which he masks by putting it in the passive tense.
I'm just asking for honesty from all.

But mostly I am with Alex. I get nauseated being lectured by Al Gore and John Kerry, with their multiple mansions, A/C systems, car, water use, $6 million tax-evading yacht, etc. I wish some reporter would ask them, "If everyone lived like you, how could we possibly sustain this planet? Why don't you truly change the way you live if you believe this problem is so dire."

Overall, this feels like the most summery summer we've had in a while---a few cool days, a couple of short heat waves in the 90s, but mostly highs in the low to high 80s. When the meteorologists point out this summer is record-breaking, they're not saying it's nonstop heatwaves; I bet the *average temp* (what they're comparing) is less than a degree higher than the previous record and within a few degrees of the average).

Again, it's the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what you (and I) feel. Climate is what the scientists measure, and warn about. They're related, but the *weather* effect of the *climate* getting warmer is not necessarily warmth but greater extremes.

Do you honestly think the corporations' track record is significantly worse than the government's?

The answer - if you're going to be honest - is no.

If you're going to change the question in mid-stream and ask which you should trust MORE ... I'd put my money on corporations. Government does what it does not out of altruism, but out of power-mongering. Government collects power for the sake of collecting power - and they aren't cost effective in doing so and generally pick pockets to keep doing it.

Corporations do what they do for the sake of making money, and they need to have employees which means that others will also make money.

[[Notice how in the deniers' posts there are never any facts. Nor are there any specific refutations of the facts of the case of anthropogenic global warming.]]

Watsamatter? East Anglia fell out of your short term memory already and you think it's time to go back on the "All Is Well" offensive?

First of all, scientific skeptics DO NOT NEED facts as you wish to suppose them; the only people who need scientific support are those who propose a scientific hypothesis. In this case, that would be ... those who believe in anthropogenic global warming. Please go back to 7th grade where this most basic tenet of Scientific Process was taught and relearn it.

Second of all, it's obvious you don't pay attention to even the mainstream news and instead choose to stick your fingers in your ears and loudly screech your gangsta rap to drown out information you don't like, so I'll just remind you of a smattering of issues that your sainted "factual" anthropogenic global warming priests haven't sufficiently answered yet:

1] the Scientific Process requires a hypothesis rule out *all* other possible explanations for the phenomenon they are ascribing to the cause they are hypothesizing. This is not an option. It MUST be done. The earth underwent a period of heating several centuries ago and which lasted for several centuries, called the Medieval Warm Period. Science has not reached consensus on how or why it occured, largely because the mechanisms of long-term climatic variations are not well understood. Because there is no general understanding of the mechanisms of climate variation, the causes of the Medieval Warm Period cannot be ruled out as causes - total or partial - of any current conditions. Any causes of current climate variance beyond man-made causes are simply being denied out of hand;

2] the geological record that global warmers love to tout have shown rather unmistakably that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than we are currently, and comparable - at its height - to where the direst of the prophecied futures would be. The Medieval Warm Period is nearly universally seen as the biggest boon to human civilization and progress in millenia. The lone exception to this estimation is that it also allowed the otherwise ice-locked Norwegians out of their fjords to go rampaging around Europe as Vikings;

3] many of the current high priests of global warming have been caught - some repeatedly - falsifying data to support their doctrine. And for the sake of politeness I'm not going to bring up East Anglia and their well-known issues. James Hansen, current Director of NASA, has been caught upward of a dozen times with false data - which he calls "calculation errors" or "transcription errors". Yet he never, ever fixes those errors after being caught with them. He has a raft of scallawags following him around now with the purpose of finding the next boner Hansen will issue. The last one *I* read about was Hansen's attribution of a single reporting station data in Siberia in September as the average of the northern half of Asia ... for October.

4] anthropegenic global warming will need to score a whole bunch of very clear, very ethically sustainable victories in order to live down the infamous declarations of the recently deceased Stephen Schneider: "...we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have."

You up to the challenge? Or are you content to screed from the sidelines?

I don't understand how some find it so difficult to see how burning massive amounts of oil and coal can make the earth get hotter. Are we somehow unable to have cause and effect?

If you put a barrel of oil and coal in the corner of your house and light it on fire, will it fill your home with smoke? When you smell and see the smoke, would you deny what the cause is?

Beyond Climate Change though, what is so wrong with using alternatives? Forget Climate Change- take it out of the equation. Are the deniers against clean energy? Without Clean Energy, Iran has an excuse to build nuclear power plants, we go to war to protect 'our' oil interests, people die in coal mines, we're at the mercy of gas prices (this is not to be underestimated), we have to pay for electricity- whereas if the "democrats agenda" comes to pass, we focus on making Solar's current efficiency of 17% sun energy capture rate go up to 70+%, where it can power a house MUCH cheaper than oil or coal.

So, the deniers do themselves and 95+% of the world a great disservice. The other 5% of course are those who profit from oil and coal. But again, forget Climate Change- I want a solar dish on my roof that charges my electric car. Fight for that, and fight hard. http://EnergyInOurHands.com

Exceptional rain and flooding in China in 1332 was estimated to have killed seven million people.

In Holland, on April 27, 1421, the sea submerged 72 Dutch counties, killing 100,000 people. On November 1, 1530, sea dikes burst in Holland, submerging much of the country and killing 400,000 people. In 1642 floods in China killed 300,000.

Between 1851 and 1866, the low area between Beijing, Shanghai and Hankow flooded repeatedly during a disastrous 15 years of storms. It is estimated that 40 to 50 million Chinese perished in these floods.

In 1887, spring rains in China caused the Yellow River to overflow, covering 50,000 square miles and killing an estimated 1.5 million people.

A drought in India in the years 1876-78 is estimated to have killed 5 million people. A drought in China over the same time period is believed to have killed between 9 and 13 million. In 1896-97 a combination of drought and plague killed 5 million in India.

In 1970, a cyclone-driven tidal wave overwhelmed the Ganges Delta in what is now Bangladesh, killing somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 people.

These are just a fraction of historical archive reports of extreme weather events in history,

Ah, what the heck, that's just weather, right? The heat wave
in Russia and the floods in Bangladesh, now that's global warming, but what's the severe cold in South America? I guess that's global warming too.

[[I don't understand how some find it so difficult to see how burning massive amounts of oil and coal can make the earth get hotter]]

Are you SERIOUSLY advertising yourself to be stupid?

What did people do before burning oil and coal, Pat? Cook over burning stares and smoldering kisses? They burned wood and dung ... and coal, and pitch, and everything else that was flammable.

You are not talking about placing a burning barrel of oil in the corner of your house where once there was a bvase full of posies. You're talking about putting a barrel of burning oil in the corner of your house where once there was a cord of burning wood. In both cases the house gets hot.

Now if you would PLEASE plug in your brain.

[[ what is so wrong with using alternatives?]]

Not a thing. Can you guarantee sunny days? Can you guarantee a 7mph wind?

What? You CAN'T?

Well, gosh, we just found out what's wrong with alternatives, then, din't we?

Have you forgotten to plug in your brain again?

[[ the deniers do themselves and 95+% of the world a great disservice...]]

And the ijjits who believe in pixies and unicorns will make it all better, I'm sure.

ZORN REPLY -- "Stupid"? "Ijjits"? Look in the mirror, Ross. You're the one bringing to the table the historically moronic argument about energy use when the population was a small fraction of what it is today and energy use was comparatively infinitesimal. I would suggest you plug in your own brain, but....

And to think that over at your blog you preen about not being one of the "strident ideologues." My, my.

EZ, I suspect that rwilymz is frustrated at the general lack of deep knowledge of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) true believer crowd. For instance, commenter Patrick seems to be confused as to the theory of AGW; it's thought to be caused not by the heat released by combustion, but by the previously sequestered carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels.

The trouble with that theory is that it doesn't fit the data. Climate has been changing, warmer and cooler, for eons without any human input; yet, this time, magically, it's because of us! If the theory doesn't fit the data, you don't need new data, you need a new theory.

rwilymz has a blog? I'll have to find it; his comments, on any blog, are among the most rational and well-informed I've seen.

The oil spills, hurricanes, floods, mudslides, and the global heat wave (which have been the cause of many fires, toxic smoke, and deaths) have many searching for answers. The internet is buzzing with articles and excellent blogs. But could it be simply the biblical sequence of God's wrath being poured out upon the earth which is relevant to current events in today's world. What if we are dealing with the wrath of God? Please understand the wrath of God is letting man slip deeper and deeper into the consequences of his own sin. Please visit my website at http://www.revelation-truth.org . Rev. Daniel W. Blair author of the book Final Warning

Quote:
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"While Greenland's glaciers break off thousands of icebergs into Arctic waters every year, scientists say this ice island is the biggest in the northern hemisphere since 1962." Did that one 48 years ago possibly symbolize global warming?"
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I'm not sure where you're getting the facts from. the Peterman did not calve an ice berg, 48 years ago in 1962. In 1962 the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, located on the northwest coast of Ellesmere Island Canada, broke up into smaller pieces which became lodged between real islands inside Nares Strait.

Tho NOAA report said warmest in 131 years. So what CO2 caused that year to be warm? Not that NOAA is a reputable source of climate information anyway. Warmist advocates make lousy scientists, and NOAA's climate information is a national embarrassment.

ZORN REPLY -- I'm sure we'd all bow to your superior credentials. If you had any.

Harbinger & Rwi, my comments about a barrel of oil in the corner of your house were not meant to say that GW is here because of the heat that the burning oil gives off, though I can see how you might have been confused by what I was trying to say.

The Greenhouse Effect theory suggests that as CO2 builds up in the atmosphere it begins to act like glass does in a greenhouse, where light passes through, but the heat that it creates when it hits objects under the glass cannot escape and it builds up under the glass- like when your car gets hot when the windows are up. I know that CO2 is not glass, but I can see how it’s “possible” that it could act like it.

As far as solar when it’s cloudy or night time, of course you can’t collect as much energy then. But you can collect it when it is sunny, and you can use it then. So why are you not supportive of perfecting technologies that do that?

Then, there are batteries, you simply plug your solar into the battery and use the charged batteries at night. Also, it’s not as though we’re talking about taking away coal or oil immediately and not having it there when needed. It should be a back-up, and it will become the more expensive backup as solar technology improves. We should probably save it on this planet for when we REALLY need it, instead of using it all up as though there’s no other option.

When solar becomes cheaper than oil and coal, we will pay less for electricity, and when we have electric cars, we won’t worry as much about the fluctuating cost of fossil fuels. This is why I say that arguing against the idea of Global Warming is a disservice. So what if GW isn’t real, the goals is the same- cheaper energy, less war for oil, less pollution, less dramatic price fluctuations.

Right now, solar is about 12-17% efficient. Around 70-80% it blows the cost of oil and coal away. The argument FOR Global Warming is your friend whether you like it or not (unless you or your family works for oil or coal, in which case you may wish to be extremely selfish and keep up the resistance).

We can get to 80% Solar efficiency. We may even be close to 50% right now, and with a much cheaper technology than solar panels:

I believe that I am a good person who truly considers the best outcomes for the most people over the longest term. I’ve studied this since my High School term paper in 1992 on the Greenhouse Effect, and I’ve watched the progress of solar every step of the way, and I’ve watched the oil & coal lobbyists pay senators to vote against clean energy for decades. I know my way around these parts. You seem to be either just getting started or you are in the fossil fuel business. Either way, I hope you’ll come around, because when you do it’s like basking in the sun, it’s a wonderful feeling to be in touch with the truth and see it from this angle. We will have solar houses and electric cars, and whether GW is real or not, you will remember this conversation when you first step into your electric car and drive on energy that you collected from the sun for penny’s on the dollar.

--"Alex" asks what's the ideal climate? The "ideal" climate is the climate that civilizations have adapted to over thousands of years. It's where local agricultural practices have worked for countless generations, and predictable wildlife stocks exist and migration patterns repeat. Short-term climate shifts have occurred throughout history. Some have led to mass extinctions, and some have had little impact. Typically, though, sustained climate change happens over geologic time, not radical shifts over a few decades. Polar ice core samples show that the pronounced increase in CO2 that began following the industrial revolution is unprecedented. There have been periods in pre-history when CO2 levels were higher, but that coincided with 40% of the polar regions being covered by forest. What is plainly evident is the Earth has been rapidly warming since the '70s, and the warming is coinciding with rising CO2 levels attributable to man-made sources. As a result, there is a real threat that populations will be displaced by rising sea water and/or changes in agricultural conditions. Smart, enterprising nations are reacting to the threat by revamping their energy policies and developing exportable energy solutions. For the time being, however, the US remains solidly stuck in the status quo of relying on domestic coal and imported oil, and being a net importer of next-generation energy technology. The CATO institute, whose climate policy research is largely funded by fossil fuel interests, has evolved their defense of this status quo over the last decade from flat denial, to acknowledging climate change based on natural causes, to acknowledging climate change caused in large part by human-based CO2 emissions (but insisting that we allow the free market to very gradually move in the direction of alternative energy). You can shoot the messenger, especially if Al Gore really gets under your skin, but then you're missing the point. I'm afraid our country's inaction on modernizing our energy policy is emblematic of our diminishing leadership role in the world.

"I don't find anyone who needs to troll comment boards in search of others to lambast and insult rational. This may be entertainment for some, I just find it irritating."
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But, but, but...isn't that what you just did?

About "Change of Subject."

"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.
More about Eric Zorn

Contributing editor Jessica Reynolds is a 2012 graduate of Loyola University Chicago and is the coordinator of the Tribune's editorial board. She can be reached at jreynolds at tribune.com.